Kripke said that for Season 5, "It's the Apocalypse. We're not pulling our punches. We're not promising the apocalypse and then saying, 'Oh wait, we're going to hedge our bets when you come back after the cliffhanger,' and not really. It's the full on End of Days, out of the Book of Revelation Apocalypse." Though Kripke adds with a laugh, "For budgetary reasons, much of it happens off camera. We've been referring to it as the Wal-Mart apocalypse. But there's horseman and there's the devil and there's God and comets named Wormwood and the whole deal."

Edlund said that for his part, "The apocalypse to me is very interesting, because we're going to be doing kind of the Playhouse 90 kind of Apocalypse. We don't have too much money, so don't swing the camera over there. Focus on the ruin that we just made. That to me is interesting because it's strategic, it's a puzzle to solve. There's a lot of weird little details."

The Tick creator and former Angel writer also mused, "Not too many shows trigger the apocalypse. I've been on a lot of pre-apocalyptic shows. It was all about, "We're gonna do it, we're gonna do it!" - Season after season of Angel. I love Angel. I worked on it and I loved it. But to be on a show that goes, "F**k it. Let's just do it…" To actually try and navigate a sustainable, dramatic apocalypse, with almost no money. That's worth going to work for I think!"

Kripke noted that while Sam and Dean are trying to "pull the plug" on the Apocalypse, "the angels want [the Apocalypse] to move on to paradise and the demons want it too. Everyone just want to bring on the prize fight. A lot of the things that we introduced in the season finale really set the stage for what we're playing out here in Season 5."

As for the pivotal new player on the series, "We were careful not to go with a typical take on Lucifer," says Gamble. " Our Lucifer is played by Mark Pellegrino {Dexter / Lost). He's beautiful and gentle and he has a very, very good f**king point to make! We said our angels were going to be dicks. We have a spectrum of angels. Some of them are good and some of them seem to be bad and have ulterior motives. And Lucifer is somewhere on that spectrum, but you would maybe expect him to pop up all the way on the evil end of the spectrum – and that's not necessarily so. He has a very complex and interesting point of view. So he's been really fascinating to kind of unlock and figure out and understand. I'm really excited about him. I'm glad he's a real presence in the story arc."

Since Lucifer is a full-fledged character this season, what about God? Never let it be said that Supernatural holds back, as Kripke revealed, "We are going to meet God this year. Not anytime soon and not in the first run, but God is a character, which has led to hilarious and heady times in the writers room of I>Supernatural, trying to break God's motivation. 'What is God's want in this scene? What does God want?' And then we started laughing, because Gossip Girl ain't having these problems. So it's been fun!"

Misha Collins

Gamble also noted, "We are actually shooting an episode right now about one of the horsemen, who pops up very early on. We went A-list right away! They are a completely other species than we've done before and we had to ask ourselves, 'What are they?' Are they demons, are they angels or are they something else? What do they do and how do they feel? What does the apocalypse mean to them? So they have been really fun. So if angels are dicks… archangels are super-dicks. They are very different than angels and we're starting to explore that. The only representation of an archangel we've seen before is this sort of ominous rumbling when Chuck (Rob Benedict) was threatened, so we're going to follow up on that in a very extreme way. You're going to find out what happened next and you're going to meet the angel behind the rumble… who's not a nice guy."

Then there's returning characters, which this season will have plenty of. "Ellen and Jo come back," said Kripke, revealing that the mother and daughter are "a hunter duo now. Jo just insisted on hunting and Ellen said, 'Alright, if you're hunting, you're hunting with me.' And they're back in episode 2. That's one of the advantages of having a fifth season show, which is you have history and you can pull in characters who have automatic back-story and meaning and that's so much more fun than trying to introduce or break a new character. So we're always going back. Meg is back. Not in the meat suit of Nicki Aycok, although I would have loved to have had it in the meat suit of Nicki Aycox. And I was dying for it. We literally spent half a day trying to figure out the logic of how that could happen and we couldn't. But she's in the body of a beautiful, really talented actress – Rachel Miner. So we're trying to bring back as many people as we can. Chuck's back, Zachariah's back. I love this kind of recurring cast of players."

As for Sam and Dean's more consistent allies, Collins – newly promoted to series regular – noted that when it comes to the current crisis, "I should not take credit for this. Sam and Dean screwed up and triggered the apocalypse! And now it's a matter of trying to either reverse that process or to mitigate the damage. But the Apocalypse is unfurling, and now we're hunted by both angels and demons. We're being hunted from both ends of the spectrum now. Last season we felt like the angels were our allies – at least we have that to fall back on. Now we don't have that anymore. It's just a handful of people fighting all of the most powerful beings in the universe."